


Waiting Room

by Pigeon_theoneandonly



Series: Ben Shepard [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Hospital, Injury, M/M, pre-relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeon_theoneandonly/pseuds/Pigeon_theoneandonly
Summary: Ben Shepard sits in a hospital room aboard the Citadel, and thinks about regrets and might-have-beens with Kaidan Alenko.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Male Shepard
Series: Ben Shepard [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910524
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	Waiting Room

The flock of doctors and nurses dispersed as quickly as it came, streaming out the door with specimens and datapads clutched tight in their hands, and left behind a silence punctuated only by the whirring of machines. The mechanical clink of the respirator set every nerve on edge. Compared to when they first arrived, he might as well visit a tomb.

Ben Shepard tightened his arms, crossed over his chest, rejecting that analogy before it fully formed. It was revolting. This was a hospital room. Not a grave.

Kaidan lay still and bloodless on the bed. His only color the bruising about his head and shoulders, where that fucking Cerberus machine drove him into the shuttle like pounding meat.

Ben couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare. Just stirring the air could create a catastrophe, Kaidan looked that fragile. 

One of the machines beeped. Ben nearly jumped out of his skin. The nurse caught it as she came through the door, and offered a comforting smile as she went to silence the alarm. “Nothing to worry about. He has a small fever. It’s expected after the transfusion.”

He bled slowly into his chest for the entire flight to the Citadel. By the time they arrived, his blood pressure was so low Ben couldn’t find his pulse. EDI could, via sensor clipped to his finger, but that was poor reassurance.

When Ben didn’t respond, the nurse bit her lip, the inquiry tentative. “How long have you been together?”

That startled him out of the memory. “We’re… we’re not…” He cleared his throat. Straightened. “He’s an old friend.”

Old friend. Because that was a shade less embarrassing than _unrequited crush of nearly four years_. Even if it slid off his tongue with a bitter taste.

“You’ve been here for hours.” 

He’d climbed into the ambulance when it met them at the dock. Ben learned long ago, back when he still called himself a Red, that if you acted like you belonged people rarely questioned it. Nobody had objected. 

The nurse pursed her mouth. “You should consider getting some rest yourself. He won’t be awake for… We can contact you when he wakes up.”

His fingers dug into his elbows, leaving white spots where they cut off blood to the skin. But his voice remained level. Calm as ever, like giving orders in the middle of a battle. “That’s okay. I’ll stay here.”

Another smile, this one tight and fleeting, and she left. 

Ben glanced around. Glass walled off the room, lending it the feel of a fishbowl. No privacy to be found. But at least nobody could hear them. He perched awkwardly on a stool at Kaidan’s bedside, left there by one of the physicians. An actual chair wouldn’t fit here, with its lack of rollers and arms getting in the way of movement and equipment. “Hey, Kaidan.”

Feeling stupid as the words left his mouth. Talking to unconscious people never failed to put him ill at ease. He’d been in this situation a few dozen times, for marines under his command, for wounded friends.

A burst of desperate laughter escaped his mouth. He buried his face in his hands. He’d never been here before. Not like this. Not with him.

But he couldn’t break down. Soon, Liara would call, and it would be time to talk to the Council and try to negotiate a way out for Earth. So he tried to move his mind onto something happier. “Remember the last time we were here?”

After the Battle of the Citadel, after the med check— because nobody could believe an entire reaper leg fell on his head, and he crawled out completely intact— after the initial chaos, the best thing the _Normandy_ crew could do was get out of the way. They went down to the wards and found a few hundred other survivors packed into a club. Dancing like they’d seen the end of the world, and lived. Even the bar had opened up its full stocks free of charge.

They spent six months hunting Saren and the geth. The party was exactly what they needed. Remembering it brought a grin to his face, despite the circumstances. “You are the worst dancer in the galaxy.”

Kaidan had no sense of the beat, and as sure as his movements were in combat, he grew another elbow or two on the dance floor. Ben never saw anyone so clumsy. So he tried to teach him. 

Ben wasn’t a master, but he could at least move like he understood music. They wound up in a dark corner of the club when the DJ VI swapped songs. Slower and more melodic, it should’ve been a hint to take a breather. But instead, Kaidan had moved closer to him. He was a little taller, a quality that never failed to push Ben’s buttons, and revolving slowly in the shadows, close enough to feel the warmth through his shirt and smell the musk of his skin… well, it had put to rest the question of whether Kaidan was interested in men. Or even in him particularly. But Ben was his commanding officer, and that boundary was as hard and fast as they came.

Still, there was a moment, between the song ending and the next starting up, when their eyes had met, and for a wild second it seemed anything could happen. Then Joker yelled for him, because no one had seen him in minutes and party missed him, and it burst like a pricked soap bubble. Kaidan slipped away.

Now he lay unmoving apart from the mechanical rise and fall of his chest. Eyes shut and waiting. A mute receiver. 

Ben cleared his throat again. Blinked twice to clear his eyes, and groped for his hand, needing to feel the warm blood flowing through his skin, any proof of life. “I… I’m sorry. For everything.”

For dying, for letting him walk away on Horizon, for not being fast enough on Mars. For not doing anything in that endless second when they stared into each other at the end of the song.

“I wish…” What? Anderson had a phrase, one he’d picked up from his London upbringing— _what’s done is done and cannot be undone._ There was no point in wishing otherwise. “I just… I miss talking to you. I miss seeing you every day.” 

He swallowed. “I miss fighting side-by-side. It might be wrong, considering, but pushing back Cerberus down there on Mars… I haven’t felt that right since I woke up.”

The comatose body offered no reply. It was and wasn’t Kaidan. So much him that Ben found it hard to look away, but at the same time, uninhabited, lacking any of Kaidan’s vitality or presence. Ben took a final shaking breath. “Hang in there. Because the next time I’m back here, you and me, we’re going to settle this. We’re going to fix this. And then we’re going to go out there, and win this thing. Okay?”

Not a twitch. Ben slipped his hand free, stood, patted his shoulder, and answered for him. “Okay.”

Then he departed, straightening as he walked through the door, for another meeting, another day, another war of being Commander Shepard, and left Ben’s heart back in that room.


End file.
